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Rational – Irrational – Differently Rational
I find it very difficult to write about this topic, because most people seem unwilling to see my point of view. For most people there is only the dichotomy “rational” versus “irrational” — “differently rational” is not a category they feel comfortable with. [1]
It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.
Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”, p. 52Although the word “rationalisation” exists, and also the word “rationality” and its plural form are both well-known and hardly incomprehensible, the notion of different kinds or modes of rationality still simply does not compute, make sense or anything like that.
In contrast, there are many people who maintain that most humans are irrational when it comes to decision-making.
Yet the advertising industry — and especially the quasi-scientific approach that Edward Bernays introduced it to — has become very adept at telling stories that increasingly make consumers buy it (whatever “it” is). This is based on insights that are downright predictable — decisions are not made irrationally, they are simply differently rational.
Note that while consumer behavior is obviously very well researched, virtually none of the insights gained are widely published. Competitive companies have little or no interest in sharing their own trade secrets with their own competitors.
I don’t know much about Edward Bernays, and I also never studied “public relations”. Yet I did learn about him through my work (in a field called “information science”) — and I am fascinated by his “story”. A significant part of this story is beyond the shadow of a doubt his close relationship to his “double” [1] uncle (Sigmund Freud). And I find it particularly noteworthy to point out that he and his double uncle did not develop their double relationship into a professional relationship to “treat” the psychological issues that they observed in the context of “mass psychology”; instead, they did develop a professional relationship to exploit the psychological issues they observed in the context of “mass psychology” (for mutual financial gain).
Source: “The Social Construction of Publishing“ In the century since they did so, the scientific investigation of propaganda techniques and technology has been expanded greatly, and it has gained momentum precisely because it was thereby discovered that this form of exploitation is an extremely lucrative business practice. So far, we are apparently nowhere near “peak propaganda” yet.
[1] For more about the concept of rationality, see also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[2] I have just now made up this term on my own — I don’t know of a more “correct” term for the exact family relationship that existed between the two.
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AI = PR
Today, “propaganda” is closely associated with dictatorship. It is the boot stamping down on faces. Here in Germany I hear it mentioned time and again in messaging about historical facts together with historical footage — usually Adolf Hitler screaming into a microphone.
Yet propaganda also has a more innocent-looking face, which is (perhaps) in fact much more insidious. This is a world of poor huddled masses, hungering for small bits and pieces of truth, which — whenever one comes within reach — they reach out, grab, hold on to and eagerly consume and thereby internalize before it can be forgotten, or forever lost. Bridget Phetasy has employed this imagery repeatedly when checking for “news” in the dumpster in her podcast titled “Dumpster Fire”. [1]
In this second kind of propaganda, which we might refer to as consumer-driven propaganda or simply “consumer propaganda”, nothing like scientific scepticism plays any significant role: there is no burden of proof, because the consumers willingly consume any messaging dished out … as it is easier to simply consume indiscriminately than to ask questions or otherwise risk starvation.
This insight is nothing new. It is a basic premise of public relations and also obviously and transparently spelled out by Edward Bernays in the third chapter of “Propaganda”:
Source: https://squ.data.blog/2026/09/05/in-public-opinion-the-public-relations-counsel-is-judge-and-jury-because-through-his-pleading-of-a-case-the-public-may-accede-to-his-opinion-and-judgment Although today people have a somewhat more reserved stance when it comes to traditional advertising, few people bring a similar sceptical attitude to so-called “search results” or (as in this case) when a so-called “search engine” offers an answer from so-called “artificial intelligence” instead. On the contrary: many people use Google (or similar websites) as if they were proof of something! Especially young, naive people are particularly prone to thinking (for example) that if Google returns no matching result for a query that no such website exists anywhere on the Internet. To teach such young, naive people a little about the real world, you could simply ask them to use their favorite so-called “search engine” to search for the quote by Edward Bernays (above) and to see whether the post which I published just yesterday shows up (or NOT).
[1] See https://www.phetasy.com
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Pavlov, Natural Language, Rubber Stamps, Repetition, …
Nature and natural language are certainly forces to be reckoned with, and so Pavlov’s experiments showing that to some extent interpretations of the real world can be influenced by what has become referred to as “behavioral conditioning” were truly groundbreaking. At the same time, we need to recognize that human natural languages are a special case — insofar as humans themselves discern many species of language within the larger grouping we might refer to generally as “human language”. Even focusing directly on spoken or written languages, humans discern a wide variety, usually having to do with the different communities they also distinguish. [1]
Therefore, Edward Bernays’ manipulative approach of coopting celebrated spokespersons to endorse and advocate for particular products or services may very well be much less effective today than in the heyday of classical propaganda. While many more stalwart companies may still try to use such methods (particularly in more outdated media such as television or similar technologies based on “brought to you by” advertising methods). The innumerable repetitions of repeated rubber-stamp impressions are today hallmarks of bogus bullshit shunned by younger generations no longer innocent enough to be suckered into believing in the sponsors’ messages polluting the channels they have turned into toxic dumps.
Instead, the more inspired and interested youth of today (and in particular, the somewhat enlightened examples) shun irrational media [2] like the plague of bygone technlogy. They put print media on par with hieroglyphics. They compare radio waves with towers of Babel. They view centralization as a leather boot.
Source: “Irrational Media’s Business Model is Propaganda“ In contrast, today young, budding communities see enormous growth potential in networks of rational media. Interlocking communities of interest each revolving around linguistic communities identifying particular aspects of daily life and thereby focus on what matters most to their own as well as communal well-being. In this world, there is simply no need for any central authority to govern affairs. If there is any problem in any one particular camp, the wonders of the adaptiveness inherent in contiually evolving natural languages will immediately route around the problem — problem solved.
[1] For more about this phenomenon, please see “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ]
[2] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
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Publicacy 101: Edward Bernays + Propaganda = Industrialization of Institutional Knowledge Acquisition in the Twentieth Century
During the Italian Renaissance, expert knowledge was still by and large handcrafted. The machines Leonardo Da Vinci created were, to him (I guess), just additional examples of more and more “artworks” created as piece works, contract work done as “paid gigs”.
Yet even with contemporaries such as Gutenberg, a newfangled approach was appearing: the first kindling of what Edward Bernays would later reflect upon as elements of market forces. In the span of those five centuries that separated the beginning Renaissance from the modern invention of so-called “Public Relations” (PR), numerous revolutions of scientific thought and institutions would slowly transform a world of individual faces into a faceless industrial society. But maybe Bernays did not wish to upset his audience, so instead he sold them a more human and down-to-Earth story.
Yet by the Twentieth Century, the Albert Einsteins of the world could participate in institutions such as Princeton University. Likewise, so could also what would later become popularised as “Fortune 500” companies — indeed, more and more such corporate institutions are even encouraged to do so. In those intervening five centuries, the world had fashioned innumerable marketplaces for uncountable kinds of information, and this process of institutionalisation is (I believe) what the first chapter of Edward Bernays’ “Propaganda” is all about.
Over the course of the Twentieth Century, I feel the role of personal brands (such as Albert Einstein or some prominent leader of a publishing corporation) diminished, and instead the role of corporate brands increased … such that the knowledge, expertise and talent that had in previous centuries been concentrated in individuals such as Da Vinci and Gutenberg was gradually transferred to institutional organizations, as these organizations increasingly acquired the increasingly loyal (to the company or corporation) support of expert workers, talented designers and so on. Ultimately, we no longer needed to be able to assess the quality of machines by evaluating the workmanship contributed to every individual part. Neither would we (reasonably) be so foolish as to trust the endorsement of any product from any celebrity (as Bernays argued). Increasingly, reasonable people would trust corporate brands if and when the corresponding corporations appropriately managed all the factors involved in the production of goods and services they produced.
By the turn of the millennium, there were so many corporations (and corporate brands) that in almost any market segment several corporations would stand in direct competition with one another. Increasingly, the distinguishing characteristic (or “Unique Selling Proposition”) of any successful brand will become more a matter of appropriately suiting the consumer (rather than some more general “warm and fuzzy” feeling such as happiness or some simple albeit abstract concept of excellence).
The comparatively simplistic approaches used in the Twentieth Century are simply no longer well-suited to addressing the complexities facing both consumers and producers today. Never before has the world been so immensely globally interconnected. We are no longer simply “afflicted” by global pandemics — we now obviously produce them, too.
“Shopping” is one of the most widely used commercial concepts [source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping.com ] -
Let’s Kill “Social Media”
In the early 2010s, teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones and the phone-based childhood began: their social lives moved on to social media.
Jonathan Haidt, “How screens stole childhood — and how to get it back” (“TED Talk”, April 2026)Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have been on a long-standing concerted campaign to criminalise some murky concept of “Social Media” for many years — perhaps already close to a decade. Contrast this with some critical statements made in a review of his most recent book:
First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.
Candice L. Odgers, “Is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?” in “Nature”, Vol. 628, p. 29 (4 April 2024 [ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2 ] )
“Social-media platforms aren’t always social” Further, Candice L. Odgers concludes:
Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.
ibid.The way I see it, Mr. Haidt can hardly be referred to as a scientist at all, as he cannot seem to define the thing (“social media”) he apparently hopes to aim at in using the crosshairs of his misguided finder. Indeed: I have yet to meet anyone who can provide an adequate, useful, so-called “operational” definition of this illusory term. I believe so much hot air and hogwash have been spread so far and wide since it was first used (I believe by Mark Zuckerberg) that it should be entirely banished from any lexicon intending to be somewhat scientific in nature.
Today, the term is nothing more unusable nonsense.
Anyone who continues to use this term ought to be referred to as a popular (i.e. “populist”) quack, charlatan, and perhaps worst of all: propagandist.
What I really want to know is: Who are these quacks, charlatans and propagandists working for? Obviously, someone must be paying these quasi-scientific thinkers to dream up these stories, get on stages to present them, and act like they are doing anything meaningful … besides misleading the public at large down rabbit holes to nowhere.
Let me offer my own very speculative and so far still completely undocumented hunch.
I think it is funded by no other than the invisible college of Silicon Valley global leading companies … those with abnormally high concentrations of billionaires and trillionaires who seek to blame some scapegoat phenomenon for innumerable social problems — they all want to blame someone else. They all find “social media” to be a very useful concept because nobody can define what it is (and therefore, their own “unicorn” many-times-over company cannot be blamed). So they pay these bigwig quacks and charlatans exorbitant expense accounts to go on never-ending whirlwind tours of storytelling scary ghost-stories over and over again … thereby feeding a frenzied public with ever more outrageous scapegoat bullshit to hack around on.
Personally, I myself feel strongly vindicated by the fact that Ogden’s critical review appeared in a leading “rational media” [1] scientific journal.
[1] See “Rational Media“[ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
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Economics of Information 2.0: Censorship
Just to remind you, last week I started off with:
Traditionally, the field known as the “Economics of Information” has mainly been focused on how market prices happen (in the “supply and demand” scheme of things).
“Economics of Information 2.0: Advertising“And then I talked a bunch about how (predominantly online) advertising today has changed the world from what it was before advertising became so important into what it is today (which is much more dominated by nearly all-encompassing advertising schemes).
Now let’s turn our attention to the role of censorship:
Source: “site:socio.business.blog” [ https://squ.data.blog/2026/08/08/site-socio-business-blog ] As you can easily see, different search engines go about censoring information in different ways. The image above is taken from a comparison of three different (more or less “standard”) sources. This one, duckduckgo.com, is probably the most transparent in its approach to censoring information — it basically shows you that it knows which website you are requesting information from, and then it tells you it will not show you anything from that website (even though it has just shown you the website icon, in other words, something from the website).
The other two so-called “information resources” are far more sketchy. bing.com doesn’t tell you anything at all (and thereby covers up the fact that the site is being censored). google.com indeed shows results, but misleads the customer to believe that these results would ever show up as a result to a more standard query (which site:socio.business.blog is most definitely not).
Of course I personally use none of these irrational media sites (except when I try to find out what other people might see when they apparently wish to be misled this way). [1]
Even though your mileage will almost certainly vary, this exercise is nonetheless useful to address why such censorship happens in the first place: in order to prevent suckers from getting the information they want to have — and instead to get them to click on the advertising (like DUH: read almost any one of my posts, but an excellent place to start is (in particular): pay attention to the links I shared in last week’s post about advertising: “Economics of Information 2.0: Advertising” 😉 ).
[1] Note, however, that Mark Zuckerberg very astutely observed once that no two people will ever see the same combination of content — apparently on any screen … ever. For more about rational media (vs. “irrational media”), see “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ] and “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ].
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Economics of Information 2.0: Advertising
Traditionally, the field known as the “Economics of Information” has mainly been focused on how market prices happen (in the “supply and demand” scheme of things). I do not aim to discount the very significant work that has been done here in the last half century (give or take a decade or two).
Yet I do wish to bring millennials as well as many largely illiterate people a little more “up to date” about how the world we live in today actually works (at least the small fraction of it I feel as though I might understand well enough to be able to form an opinion on).
Of course the myth is that miracle machines are now freely available … and that these gizmos are only capable of speaking the truth. [1] The reality is something completely different.
About 10 days ago I looked at the blog post “Online Interventions” because I wanted to check on it (for typos, etc.). When I loaded the web page, I saw this:
Source: https://socio.business.blog/2026/07/26/impedant-commerce Please note that the linked-to URL is displayed (in part) at the bottom of the image. Even more significantly: Please note that the word “Advertisement” (or some similar statement) does NOT appear (neither near the image nor anywhere on the page). Perhaps this was a one-time error (a so-called “glitch”). Yet also note that the so-called “landing page” URL that was loaded after clicking on the image began with:
hallyumoah.com/2026/06/30/madonna-whore-complex-in-pop-songs/?utm_source=blaze&utm_id=189721&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=campaign_189721&utm_content=ad_385183_creative_395418& […]
https://socio.business.blog/2026/07/26/impedant-commerceSo I decided I should learn some more about these so-called “Blaze” campaigns. I regret to admit that after sitting through a long series of videos, I still learned nothing that explained why the apparent “glitch” happened. 😐
I did get to listen to many promotional messages about related websites, such as Google Analytics or so-called “social” media companies. [2]
This further underscores the importance of teaching literacy, “publicacy” and the mysterious machinations of “Human Brain Conditioner” technology (e.g. the “Mainstream Trick“). [3]
[1] See also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“, “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” and “ASS: Artificially Sentient Slop“
[2] See also “All Your Data Are More Free to Us“, “First Meditation on Social Media: Let’s Get Social“
[3] See also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
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Impedant Commerce
This week I felt both devastated and yet also hopeful at the same time (more or less). Actually, the devastation came first: Buzzkill died (see “Life is a scam” [ https://obit.news.blog/2026/07/26/life-is-a-scam ] ).
I can’t really explain my very strong emotional reaction. The “NoAgenda Show” has existed for a very long time and seemed to be very rewarding and also fulfilling for John. I did not disagree with John and Adam’s perspectives on “mainstream media” and I have quoted them quite often here (see e.g. “Mainstream Milieus“, which could be a page out of one of John’s books — except as far as I know it isn’t; it is a page out of my book, even though after I published it John actually referred himself as “the man behind the curtain” — see The Blurt — The No Agenda Show Episode 1736 [ https://noagenda.clipgenie.com/episode/1736-the-blurt?q=man+behind+curtain&t=1%3A43%3A32 ] ). Yet I did beg to differ — and perhaps that is something John did indeed resent.
I choose my own views, and I have a hunch John had a problem (or an “issue”?) with that — especially since I also choose to express them (and I do believe: effectively). Let me explain this a little more.
I had contacted Adam and John with what I thought about their plan to end the NoAgenda Show soon — I can’t remember what I wrote exactly (well, I guess I can, but maybe I simply don’t want [or need] to) … and this was the first (and only) time John sent me an email. I guess I was not only honored but also tried to take it to heart — but I now feel (and think I realize) that I apparently failed to (at that time). Looking back, I now feel as though I (more or less) “shrugged it off”. I realize this now, because I am able to read exactly what John wrote (and indeed also what I had written in the first place, which prompted his reply).
I now feel his reply was spot on, excellent, heartfelt and indeed: constructive criticism. He accused me of “pedantry“. I say accused because I feel today people only use this term in situations in which they wish to express their own experience of disgust. Otherwise — for example in situations in which they wish to express praise (or something similarly “positive”), people tend to use other terms. I feel this is very much in line with the way Wittgenstein in his later years emphasized the way contexts (and such) essentially belong to the definitions of terms (or concepts or whatever). I personally also feel that, strictly speaking: situations, environments, contexts, etc. do not repeat … but maybe they rhyme (more or less)?
I now think I am beginning to understand that when I say something like that without anyone asking me to express my own feelings, this may very well come across as pedantic.
And I also wish to speculate a little more along this tangent. I think perhaps that people with expertise in something are expected to reserve their expert opinions to situations in which they are appropriately remunerated. [1]
In my (speculative) view [2], there is an analog distinction to be made according to the “rational media” vs. “irrational media” concept. Indigenous people (or intelligence — indigena) decide(s) what is meaningful to us. This may or may not be meaningful to “them“. We are merely involved in managing our own language. And here is the kicker: the distinction between rational vs. irrational is the result of impedant commerce at work. “Impedant” is a new term: it means to limit, resist, impede some things [3]. In my view of impedant commerce, the meaningful terms are managed by maintaining their meaning within the contexts of indigena. In contrast: meaningless terms remain available for random (meaningless) attribution.
[1] Perhaps this a so-called “red thread” interwoven into Human Brain Conditioner technology (i.e. people become experts in fields where they intend to “earn their living”).
[2] For more background, see also “Supply, Demand, Natural Language & Free Markets — Some Preliminary Thoughts & Ideas“
[3] For well-known examples of such impedance, consider the plethora of academic and / or professional societies, or similar institutions which distinguish expert from novice approaches using a wide variety of constructs.
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Online Interventions
A significant part of “the meaning of life” is to intervene in some way — to make a contribution, to have an impact, etc. (cf. Viktor Frankl’s notion of so-called “logotherapy”).
Speak Up! I choose to intervene online. I don’t need to march around, get into a car, drive somewhere, or get into a plane to travel to some far away city in order to shake someone’s hand. I prefer to chill out at home. I have a pretty strong hunch that I’m not the only one taking this approach.
As my more or less regular readers probably have long since realized, I am not a big fan of ASS (“Artificially Sentient Slop”). But this week I decided to revive another intervention: Humans. I want to intervene in order to bring human literacy (and human publicacy [1] … and generally: human communications) back to life. Right now human communicative ability is dormant at best, probably much closer to comatose and desperately in need of revival.
So yesterday I revived one of my blogging projects and as a result managed to publish “[survivor-space.com] It’s Just One Of Those Day’s……” [ http://jax.news.blog/2026/07/18/survivor-space-com-its-just-one-of-those-days ]. The JAX News project is focussed on fostering better communications across blogs by providing a space for comments to be published if / when they remain unpublished at the blogs they were “submitted” to. Yesterday’s post is particularly ironic because the blogger in question had published a post lamenting about the poor quality of communications at her blog, yet obviously (to me) failed to see that she herself was contributing to creating this outcome that she seemed to think was attributable simply to unfortunate forces of nature. Yet hers is not a rare case: time and again I am reminded how many humans fail to acknowledge that communication is a cooperative process, and that finger-pointing is contra-productive to true progress.
As I sit back and wonder this lazy Sunday morning (rather than “leaning in” as I hear Sheryl Sandberg so strongly advocates), I am also speculating to what degree “force of nature” arguments hold up in a world obviously endowed with sizable amounts of “Human Brain Conditioner” technology (see also e.g. my post earlier today about “How to Be the Most-Watched Person in the Known Universe” [ https://podcasts.video.blog/2026/07/19/how-to-be-the-most-watched-person-in-the-known-universe ] ).
I do not claim to have a definitive answer to many such questions. I expect the “true” outcome may very well be not only that “time will tell”, but that what we actually do in that time will also play a significant part. and I also feel that improvements in human communications (or NOT) may indeed play a crucial role.
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bruh-space: faces + names vs. words + ideas
Are you familiar with this face?
Faces and Names You might be — if you are of a particular generation, if you have somewhat of an artistic bent, if you pay attention to popular media, and so on. [1]
This is an image of a musician performing on stage as part of a duo that created a bunch of “Songs for Drella” … which was dedicated to another artist. All three artists are now dead, so all of their faces are now gone. Their names remain, I guess as tokens of discourse in art generally.
Token is a difficult concept. [2] It seems to be something like a unit of measurement, yet it also seems to equate strings like “and” and “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” in terms of their significance. Zipf was a researcher who developed a concept now referred to as Zipf’s Law which has many significant implications in the field of information science. One of these is that short strings tend to be more common and also to be more “general” in terms of their meaning. [3]
Beyond the shadow of a doubt: Humans have evolved to be able to recognize faces — in other words: those token humans who were not as good as others in face recognition had a significantly increased risk of not surviving (or at least of not surviving as well as the others who were better at face recognition). This was probably hugely important hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Today, being able to use language is perhaps more important. Bruh, if you can vibe with others, then, bruh, you can make things happen more and better.
Language recognition is complex. To identify a written text as belonging to a global corpus globally recognized as English … is a little bit bogus, bruh. Do you get my drift? Your vocabulary and my vocabulary are not the same. We do not actually speak the same language. According to Wittgenstein, you use particular words in the contexts you show up in, and I use particular words in the contexts I show up in. These aren’t the same contexts — we are different people. Yet some of the words you use in your contexts appear to be quite similar to (or even the “same” as) words I use in my contexts … as in: the “same” tokens.
We use language to simplify communication in negotiating meaning. Being on the same page is “good enough”. Unlike computers, we won’t be blocked by wishy-washy fuzzy sets. We can live with uncertainty [4] and move on. We want to move forward.
We find the idea of agreement with billions of people unfathomable. Sometimes agreement with just one or a few partners is all we can manage, bruh.
[1] My hunch is that also (quite generally) being part of an English-speaking community helps — for example: simply to help understand the song’s lyrics
[2] See e.g. No Agenda, Episode 1884 “Code Brown” [1:49:26] https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1884/transcript?t=1:49:26
[3] See e.g. “Zipf’s Law” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf’s_law ]
[4] See also last week’s post: “The Irrational Frontier“
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 